In a country that is rapidly changing demographically -- and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century -- there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity.

These dramas always begin in the hardscrabble idyll of monolithic, once-upon-a-time 'hoods, lurch through zero-sum economic warfare where white gain goes hand-in-hand with colored/working-class loss, and invariably end in bohemian elegy, pale-faced victors compelled by guilt to speak for the dead, the erased, the evicted.

Perry, who was quoted in The New York Times over the weekend, is one of many once-upon-a-time diehard Miley fans who are reconsidering their position as Ms. Cyrus makes the transition from Disney pop star to post-adolescent pole dancer.